Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!ames!ucsd!brian
From: brian@ucsd.Edu (Brian Kantor)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: Georgia Tech's Restriction on Internet Access
Message-ID: <30136@ucsd.Edu>
Date: 16 Mar 91 17:22:24 GMT
References: <52892@cornell.UUCP> <23887@hydra.gatech.EDU> <1991Mar16.043027.19683@ddsw1.MCS.COM>
Organization: The Avant-Garde of the Now, Ltd.
Lines: 30

Either
1) Georgia Tech has decided to abandon inter-university network research
or
2) that "secure host" is going to have a lot of tunnels through it
or
3) there will be a bunch of hosts at GAT that are on the network side of
the "secure host".

Hiding all your machines behind a secure gateway is incompatable with an
awful lot of the things that university networking people like to do, it
seems to me.  I rather expect the end result to be a lot less draconian
than the initial announcement would seem to be.

But consider:
It is very clear to me that the 18 to 25 year old span of the typical
undergrad represents a WIDELY varying range of responsibility; the
problem ALL we university people are faced with is how to provide the
maximum facilities to those capable of handling them, and preventing damage
by and to those who are not yet ready.  And the hardest part is figuring
out who is who, and when the previously immature have become mature.
I don't know how to do it, and I'll wager no one else does either.

So what do you do?  Letting everyone have unrestricted access to the
network has caused problems in the past, but it could be that that is
the price we have to pay for the advantages gained thereby.  Letting no
one on to the network makes the network useless.  Exams?  Hostages?
Monetary Bonds?  Academic penalties?  Someday someone may come up with
the right answer.  So far as I know, they haven't.  Personally, I think
GAT has come up with the wrong answer, but we'll have to see.
	- Brian